Study finds young blacks do poorly on kidney dialysis

Young African-Americans do much worse on kidney dialysis than their white counterparts, and more should be referred for transplants instead of staying on the blood-filtering process indefinitely, a new study says. "As a medical community, we have been advising young black patients of treatment options for kidney failure based on the notion that they do better on dialysis than their white counterparts," said study leader Dorry L. Segev of Johns Hopkins University. But the study shows young blacks have a substantially higher risk of dying on dialysis. Researchers found black patients ages 18 to 30 were twice as likely to die on dialysis as white patients, yet only 32 percent of blacks were referred for transplants from 1995 to 2009, compared with 55 percent of whites. The study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Patient monitors could be like skin

Monitoring a patient's vital signs could one day be as simple as sticking on a tiny wireless patch, sort of like a temporary tattoo. Researchers, whose findings were in the journal Science, embedded electronic sensors in a film thinner than the diameter of a human hair, which was placed on a backing like those used for the temporary tattoos. The resulting sensor was flexible enough to move with the skin and stick without adhesives. Researchers think the devices could remain in place as long as two weeks.